Graphical user interfaces of, for instance, personal computers, digital cameras or other similar devices, may be used to store, retrieve, print and watch digital images, such as photos. Nowadays it is also possible to view your personal images on a remote location via a web browser, that are stored by, for instance, a photo service. The user may select images to be printed by the photo service.
A single device may comprise hundreds or even thousands of images. In order to organize such big amounts of data, the images are usually divided in albums or groups. Such a group is represented by an icon and its associated metadata such as a title, date etc. When dealing with large collections of images, a user prefers to browse and search through such a collection using so-called group-based search tools.
Rather than using a fixed predetermined icon, in known graphical interfaces it is often possible to select a representative image from the group to be used as an icon for that group. This allows the user to find the group that he/she was looking for more easily. However, it is often very difficult to select a single image as representative for the entire group. Not only does this demand several actions by the user, but since a single group may comprise hundreds images, it may also be difficult for the user to select a single image as representative for the group.
Some media browser interfaces automatically select an image that may be representative for the group, as for instance the first or last image of a group. It is also known to select the image that is last viewed by a user as an icon, resulting in a constantly changing icon, which is confusing for a user.
Some media browsers interfaces use an icon that is composed of more than one image, for instance a grid of four images to represent a group of images. However, the selection of these images is also made from the images that are first in the group or have been viewed last.